AU 503: Post-Game Comments

[Catt]

This is the post-game comments thread for AU 503: Pillage and Plunder.

Add any additional thoughts or learnings here; critique your own game or others' and share anything you haven't woven into any of your DARs.

[Catt]

Other Game Thoughts

I played this one fast and loose, but still came away with a few thoughts.

Pillaging: I didn’t do a whole lot. I certainly stunted the Mongols significantly by stealing two workers, capturing a settler, and destroying almost all their tile improvements. Without the pillaging I fear the Mongols would have been quite a beast. Their start position and surrounding lands seemed to indicate that they could stifle both the Hittites and the Vikings if they were left unmolested (and what of the Inca? ). On understanding the map layout a bit at the beginning, my first thoughts were of a hyper aggressive Temujin, with great land, a horde of Keshiks, and an early Middle Ages golden age, and I wanted to reduce their later impact if possible. Three regular Chasquis appeared to be enough to slow that juggernaut down. But I agree that this was a tough map for pillaging – unless one started off on Chasquis right away (as I did, due to the course title rather than due to the natural instinct), I can readily see that a later pillage attack would have been considerably less effective. I think that if I had taken the time to REX, by the time I was prepared to mount a pillaging offensive the balance of power would have been quite different and the Mongol road network would have substantially devalued the Chasqui offensive. Absent the course focus, I would almost certainly not have started with 3 Chasquis – indeed I’ll be more likely to do so in those games where to enemy is both threatening and nearby – to enable a stream of Chasquis to get to the action quickly. I initially thought I’d mount a later pillaging assault as well – a stack of Chasquis under numerous pikes at the early Middle Ages – but game circumstances made that a highly risky strategy that I wasn't sure would yield significant benefits. I also contemplated a late game mass-pillage of China (via some infantry and bombers), but the lack of oil put the kibosh on that approach and again the risk-reward wasn’t there – not to mention the time involved in producing craters throughout China. All in all the game reinforced my belief that hitting an AI early can produce significant long-term benefits, but that knowing when and how to do so remains a bit of a challenge with my limited experience. It would certainly come more naturally when an enemy is close by and the lay of the land can be discovered quite early, or at least early enough to take appropriate steps.

Agricultural without Rivers: I am one of those players who still thinks that the Ag trait is too strong, even when fresh water is hard to come by. Even with only one city settled near water (and enjoying the despotism food bonus), the ability to make terrific use of desert before RR is significant. I also believe that the extra food in the city center remains powerful, even absent fresh water. If anything, the lack of fresh water encourages even more an early government switch to reap the benefits as soon as possible. In a game where population is power, the extra food, even if delayed to a government switch, still packs a wallop. Where much jungle needs to be cleared (workforce needed), the extra food really helps.

KAI China: China was a monster in my game. If only Mao had gone to Communism instead of Fascism I would have to do all sorts of contortions to challenge. I imagine I would have had to invade or at least seriously harass China in order to slow the juggernaut and may have been forced into repeated costly spy missions to slow the spaceship build. This would have been a significant challenge in my game since my economy depended on China for needed luxuries. Similarly, if China toned down the warmongering in the later game and went Democratic or even Republic, I might have been toast. Instead, Mao stayed Fascist and picked on one civ after another – even tried to extort a Modern Age tech from me but declined to declare war when I refused. I wish it weren’t so that an AI can reap such early/mid game success and still fail to capitalize on it in the late game.

Resource Scarcity and My Ulterior Motive: There’s been a lot of debate about the impact of resource scarcity on the player’s ability to play peacefully. I happen to think that the ability is not greatly impeded by C3C’s resource levels though I know others feel differently. By the early middle ages I decided to play without further expansion unless my hand was forced in a bit of a resource scarcity experiment. In this game my Inca were blessed with iron, coal, and rubber, but denied horses, saltpeter, oil, aluminum, and uranium. Nonetheless, by concentrating on one’s economy and, where necessary, encouraging Machiavellian wars amongst competitors, a diplo or spaceship win was within reasonably easy grasp. Even absent great terrain, absent a river (no Hoovers), holding only a precious few extra resources for trade, and little surplus gpt available from others (wartime governments), it was no great feat to focus on infrastructure and research and trade for necessary imports – I was required to forego iron for quite some time, couldn’t build more than a handful of cavalry, didn’t have a bluewater navy, and only late in the game did I build a defensive force of air and ground attack troops. My previously posted game was in Dominae’s NTTC in the strategy forum where again I played with little native resources. In other words, I guess I’m trying to show several instances where resource scarcity need not force one’s hand into warfare. Had the Inca not had a supply of coal, the impact would have been felt but would have been small. A surplus was available for trade, a workforce would have been put into place to complete the RR job quickly, and appropriate timing of trades would have assured factory-coal plant combos wherever needed (I’ve played several coal-less games since C3C was released). Lack of a key resource requires patience and an adjustment of priorities, but it need not spell the end of the game nor the start of offensive warfare.

Catt

[Strollen]

Fun game, which taught me several things but not necessarily about Pillaging.

General Comments
o I learned that I am to much of a perfectionist about my starts. Given that I was next to Ivory and a few bonus places I may have tried playing the game (although with an AG nation perhaps not.) However, I suspect I normally would have quit once I found the desert next to a jungle and such a huge lack of fresh water.
As it was I did restart once at 2510 BC.

o I've never played in game where I was so far behind the tech race in the middle ages, if wasn't for my huge trade benefits from Chemistry I wonder how I would have done. As it was I didn't get a single middle age uber-wonder (JS, Sistine, Leonardo's, or Smiths)

o The thing I liked about this game better than AU 502 was that the 2nd continent had a big tech lead over our continent. I'd very much like to see future AU game being designed so that the player has two challenges to surmount. First beating his initial rivals and than overcoming the AIs lead in other continents.


o I was impressed that Catt managed to win the space race despite an empire which IMO was too small. I guess it really shows the power of Human player vs the AI.

Strategy

o Getting your neighbors involved in a war is almost always a good strategy. My pillaging consisted of capturing 2 workers, pillaging the Mongols ivory and couple of other square. It certainly hurt the Mongols, but nothing like the Hittites who destroyed 2 mongol cities and killed probably a dozen units (while losing many of their own. The money and tech spent in getting the Hittities to attack the Mongols was well worth it, even when I was force to sue for peace on not great terms.

o Pillaging is useful and the CS is an excellent pillaging unit but I don't think pillaging is a particular powerful strategy, more like a tactic to use at times.

o I guess I disagree with those who think that an early GA isn't so bad. My GA around 500 AD helped me get Chemistry which resulted in 9 techs, and also made me competitive in getting 2 wonders. Its hard to see that the impact would have been nearly as big a deal with 2 cities and despotism limits.



AU Mod

First let me say I really enjoy all the work that people have put into moding CIV. I find the AU mod largely accomplishes goals of creating a more challenging AI (Grade B) and definitely makes for more interesting strategic decision for the player (Grade A-)

o SOZ: eventhough SOZ was vital for my victory, I think SOZ cost should be reduced to 200 or 250, OR the Ancient Cav hit point bonus should be restored. 300 makes SOZ as expensive as really good wonders like Hanging Garden.

o Longevity. Wow this has moved from a wonder, I never built to number 2 industrial age behind Hoover!.

o Research and flavors. AI ancient and middle age seem to be much more intelligent/unpredicatable. There are no safe 50 turn research paths. I have been hosed researching Currency instead of Construction, beaten to Philosphy and generally surprised in the middle ages.

o Industrial Age research still needs work. The AI often loses the game IMO by researching, Communism, Fascism, and Espionage. Nationalism is a good tech, but those 3 are losers, because generally the AI doesn't use the tech once researched. We need to figure out some way of preventing all the AIs from researching these techs. Here are my suggestions, in order of preference.
1. combine Fascism and Communism into a single advanced called Totalitarism
2. Cut the research cost of both tech advances considerably say 70 instead of 120/130
3. Eliminate Fascism.
4. Fix Fascism to make it better
I also think at 100 Ironclads is a little too expensive for the benefits it provides, say compared to 90 for Sanitation.

o Governments. I realize that pages have been written about the subject, but let me throw my 2 cents in after having played 4 or 5 games with the basic AU changes to government.
Republic vs Democracy. Just about perfect, the benefits of going from Republic to Democracy generally outweigh the Anarchy losses, especially if you anticipate a large army build-up. However, it is not a no-brainer.
Republic vs Monarchy. I find it nicely balanced some games I play as Monarch some as Republic, during AU 502 I actually switched from Monarchy to Republic to Democracy.

Feudalism still needs work, it is a worse government than either Monarchy or Republic eventhought it is more advanced tech.
Fascism, and Communism haven't played Fascism at all and Communist only once I don't really know enough to comment.

Here is my view of how the governments should be viewed by the Human player.
Monarchy: Balanced early government
Republic: Great government for small empire, or large empire in peacetime.
Feudalism: The best early war government, lousy for peacetime.
Democracy: Ultimate peace government
Communism: Excellent balanced government.
Fascism: Best war government.

Now I realize getting the AI to understand these concepts may not be possible. But right now the two new governments Feudalism and Fascism are basically worthless. I think Feudalism could possibly fixed by eliminating war weariness and keeping th corruption minimal.

Is there a better place to discuss this?

[alexman]

Insightful comments from both! That's what the AU is all about.

Also, nice to see that at least two people finished the game.

Is there a better place to discuss this?

Yes, you should probably comment in the related threads for the AU mod. Check the second post of the topped AU mod thread for links.

[Jawa Jocky]

AU 503 replay,Monarch,AUmod

So how did I lose? Simple. I extended my pillaging campaign far beyond the point where it was helpful. Instead of a hit once and done approach, I kept coming back. I wouldn’t let the Mongols improve anything so they just kept building units while there cites got bigger. Soon pillaging was no longer a viable option (too many Mongol archers) and I had to accept peace.

With peace came a flood of Mongol workers and settlers. The Mongols then proceeded to run over the Hittites whom I also pillaged extensively. I helped make a killer AI on my own continent. Not a good strategy IMHO. I also bet the research farm on philosophy only to miss by 1 turn. Not a game breaking event, but not exactly something you want to do with a weak empire.

I was starting to make a comeback. I did a very good job expanding and making use of tiles (I cleared most of the Jungle too). My empire was large and my cities had all of the improvements they needed. I was only 3 techs back and my economy was really taking off. This was all made possible by a diplomacy over military strategy. I had produced very few military units so I gave into all Mongol and Viking demands. I even joined them in an alliance against the Hittites and started building units again in most of my core cities.

Unfortunately, my allies made peace with the Hittites and I knew I was in trouble. The Mongols then made a suicide run at my well fortified border. They were dropping like flies. They continued to drop like flies until they completely overran my border. I was rushing everything South hoping to stop the bleeding at a few cities. I used the rest of my cash and luxuries to buy an Alliance with the Vikings. I was finally starting to make a second stand when Berserkers landed in my lightly guarded North. In five turns I lost 3 cities including my Capital and I accepted my defeat.

I’m starting to understand pillaging much better. It’s not a strategy, it’s a tool. It’s a speed bump for AI growth, but you cannot benefit from it when you allow it to slow your own growth.

[Sabular]

AU-mod Regent

Let me begin by saying that this course, being my first, has been both fun and educational.

Most of the things I have learned will not be of benefit to most of you because I am not that good a player. For example I learned to better pay attention to spots I can place cities on to transport irrigation, and I have learned that not having garrisons in all your cities is not always a problem.

About pillaging I learned that time is of the essence, when I first started the game I built a settler before pillaging and the cause was already lost, if you plan on pillaging you should start immediately, and preferably be sure to have victims nearby (or be able to get to them quickly). What has also helped me alot was the tendency of the AI to chase my Chasquis even though they had no chance to reach them, unless I made a mistake (which I did multiple times ). I assumed this would not be the case with high defense pillagers and a quick testgame with the zulus affirmed this. This would lead me to think that the units to tie up your opponents resources would be a low defense high move unit. If you were just going to pillage though, a high defense unit would allow you to start later as roaming archers are less of a concern. The advantage of a low defense pillager though, is that with fewer or no units coming your way, them all being busy fruitlessly chasing your pillagers, the economical disruption is minimal.

This game made me aware of a form of problematic AI behaviour that a mod may or may not be able to fix.
When I made contact with the other continent, they were well ahead of me and the vikings (the hittites and mongols were no more). They were halfway through the middleages in both the upper and lower branch of the tech tree, while I was only halfway the upperbranch. I went for democracy, intentioning tochange government and found out I was the first to discover this tech. I was then able to trade it for 4 or 5 techs with india!! What I thought would be an interesting game of playing catch up to a powerful AI continent turned out to be a bit of a farce. I do not know why India agreed to this absurdly lopsided trade or how this could be fixed, but it made the game a lot less interesting than it could have been.

All it has been a very interesting game and I feel more than ready for the shift to monarch which I had postponed for this AU game and its suboptimal starting position. AU team, thank you.

[Aqualung71]

This was a tough one - requiring more "out of the box" thinking than previous AU games I've played. Like some others, I played it more as a teaching aid, restarting several times and trying different things. Because of this approach, the longer-term game and whether I won or not was less important and less instructive than the early approach. I think this is probably the main reason that not many people have completed this game....or at least, have got to the point of reporting on it. It took me many weeks to get to this point, which is the opposite to the enthusiasm I have shown for my 2 previous AU games. From some other comments I've read, I think Nathan you too IIRC seemed to view it somewhat in this way.

So, to the game:

Pillaging

This was the first game of Civ3 I have ever played that I used any kind of pillaging as a tactic. For that reason alone I have benefited from this game.

Thinking a little more deeply (dangerous, since it's after midnight and I've had more than a few red wines!), the unfavourable conditions and resultant higher difficulty of this game made the early pillaging strategy even more necessary IMHO and so accentuated the difference between what I would term a "normal" REXing strategy and the course designer's intended pillaging theme.

In this game, if you didn't build 3 or 4 Chasqui's right off the bat and send them south across 15 or 20 tiles of mountains and hills to pillage the Mongols and/or Hittites, then you would miss the entire point of the exercise and be left complaining about the miserable starting terrain for a REXing attempt.

In my experience though, committing to the early pillaging strategy even with only 4 Chasqui's and little hope of near-term replacements, the pillaging strategy was still remarkably effective. In my game pillaging only a few Mongol tiles and stealing a couple of workers put them so far behind it effectively killed their game. The Hittites were hit a little later and so survived longer, but it was still a severe blow to them. It was remarkable how long the continent remained substantially uninhabited thereafter because of the weakened AI's ability to pump out settlers to fill the gaps.

Also noticeable, as Catt has pointed out – I too intended to attempt a second pillaging round with a second batch of Chasqui’s once I had established a larger empire, but it proved impractical and would have been too risky at a time when I needed to be concentrating on expansion and improving research and production capacity.

This leads me to conclude that under much more favourable circumstances (ie, more productive terrain and less isolation from the nearest AI), an early pillaging strategy could be completely devastating to any AI in the vicinity, as long as you are able to guard sufficiently against reprisals.

So, thumbs up to Alexman for devising the scenario, however much maligned.....whether the subtle but powerful lesson I have learned was part of the intention or whether it was merely a by-product of the desire to make the course a little more difficult, I guess doesn't really matter

Agricultural without Rivers

Man, this sucked!

But I agree that Agricultural civs are overpowered and I tend to avoid them these days since I feel it provides an easily exploitable advantage.

Extra food in deserts is also a tremendous advantage, though perhaps a little misinterpreted since it really only serves to "even up" the score if you are unlucky enough to start close to an expanse of sand as we were in this game. However, to the extent that the AI won't settle desert lands that an Agricultural human player will, there's definitely a nice REXing advantage over time.

AU Mod

The changes this time didn’t really affect my game at all. After building the MA, the spawned Armies were nice, but because of the course of my game didn’t really have any impact except to add some security to defences. I noticed the Ottomans had an Infantry/2 Sipahi Army, which was kind of nice to see, though of course the wisdom of mixing a 1 movement Infantry unit with a 3 movement Cavalry unit is questionable to say the least. Still, let’s not be too unreasonable – at least the Army was filled!

I wanted to experiment with the SPHQ in Fascism, but in this case I was struggling to keep up in research and couldn’t afford a period of protracted anarchy just to have the opportunity of building another corruption reducing building over a period of time, while at the same time enduring “forced resettlement” or whatever is the politically correct term for an unwelcome population decrease while struggling to keep up the research rate!

Governments

I’m highlighting this separately because I want to reiterate what Strollen has said. I think the AU panel has got the Republic/Democracy balance pretty much perfect. My reason for saying this is that in some games I will make the switch, whereas in others I won’t. It is definitely no longer a no-brainer. In games where I know I will be war-mongering for significant periods I will go into Monarchy then switch to Democracy. Otherwise I will probably go straight for Republic and stay there. As a religious civ I would almost certainly switch from Republic to Democracy at some point.

Under other circumstances, I would probably have tried Communism or Fascism…but in this game where I wasn’t religious and was behind on tech, I felt the risk was too great.

Having not used Feudalism to any significant extent, I shouldn’t really comment….but it still doesn’t scream out for usage when Monarchy is generally available earlier. Pinch of salt – I recognize the statements made that Feudalism is a “situation specific” government and can be useful at times, so perhaps that’s sufficient.

Tech pace

Aside from the crappy terrain (which of course was a large contributory factor), the biggest difference between this and previous AU courses I’ve played was the fact that the tech pace on our continent was way behind that on the other continent – at least, it was in my game, though perhaps not in some others. This of course required some creative thinking and alternative research choices to help speed the "catch-up".

Other Comments

I remain in awe of Catt's ability to win games under self-imposed restirctions that often result in him controlling only a third of the territory of most other successful players!

Overall

By the time I achieved the SS victory, I was nowhere near what I would normally consider an efficient empire with all corruption reducing buildings in place where necessary and many Commercial Docks built to ramp up research capacity. Again, excusing any incompetence on my part this shows the importance of the early game and conversely the longer-term effects of a slow start induced by poor terrain (and perhaps forced early unit building for pillaging purposes rather than REXing).

[Action]

Originally posted by Strollen
o
Now I realize getting the AI to understand these concepts may not be possible. But right now the two new governments Feudalism and Fascism are basically worthless. I think Feudalism could possibly fixed by eliminating war weariness and keeping th corruption minimal.

My experience is rather limited but Yes!.

Fascism really ruined the competativeness of the AIs in my game. They dropped into fascism and out of the running for victory. Their techs slowed to a crawl and they got into wars where they captured cities which ended up with 1-2 population.

And I was running Communism (which by the way seems WAAAAAAY better than it was in vanilla civ 3) so I wasn't even researching that fast until I invented the internet. Yet I was gaining techs on them, I researched two for each one they did. This didn't happen till they dropped into fascism.

[Strollen]

A follow up to some of my earlier comments. I played another game with AU Mod 1.04 with some tweaks to research. I lowered the cost of ironclads, Fascism, and Communism to 70 from 100,130,120 respectively. (I meant to remove war weariness from Feudalism)

Overall I was very pleased with the AI research choices and government selection in this game.

I was playing at Demigod level (a stretch for me.). The Sumerians (me), Iroquois, Americans, Celts, and Babylonians, started on one one continent, Gemany on Island, and the Greeks and Hittities shared a 2nd Continent. The Americans expanded quickly and the Iroquois and I ended up roughly equal size, Babylon got hemmed in early and the Celts were pretty small. By the early to mid industrial era, the Celts, Bablyons,and Hittities were basically eliminated. A large America and I were roughly even in tech, with the Iroquois lagging behind by one tech. The huge Greek empire fell behind in the tech due to early isolation but was coming on strong.

Most AI started of as Monarchy and than switched to Republic pretty early on. Nobody switched to either Fascism or Feudalism, despite obtaining Communism and Fascism. Germany ended switching to Communism because of a lengthy war but countries stayed in Republic (which is a good AI government I think)


The interesting thing for me was the industrial age research paths. Once I traded Medicine for Nationalism I was surprised to see that America researched sanitation ahead of Fascism. Nobody researched ironclad. Iroquois ended up reseaching electronics, while America went for flight. This erased my tech lead which I gained from my free tech, plus TOE. An oil-less America researched Amph warfare. (not sure if the lack of oil matters in the research priorities.)

This is proving to be a very good game because I lack, Uranium, and Rubber, and possibly aluminum and don't really have the military capabilities of getting more than rubber. I think lowering the research cost of communism, and fascism helped make the game more competitive. I hope for the next AU mod we make some changes for the industrial tech research as I suggested earlier.

I still think Feudalism is a bad government choice but as long as it doesn't cost the AI anything to research and the AI doesn't switch to it, leaving it alone is ok.

[alexman]

Originally posted by Action

My experience is rather limited but Yes!.

Fascism really ruined the competativeness of the AIs...

And I was running Communism...

Next time, you might want to try the AU mod version. Both of these issues are addressed there.

[Squeblish Nef?]

Three yellow legs, floating in a sea of green eyes.
Now that's Heaven.

[Mountain Sage]

Pillaging:
I know that nobody believes me, but at heart I am not an aggressive player. Therefore, I never played civs with good pillaging units. Unfortunately for me, this time I had to be a real b*stard. The combined Hittites/Mongols’ land would have created one real formidable foe (probably the Mongols) on my home continent. Therefore, war and pillage it is.
Tactically, pillaging and retreating was the best option. After a few turns, even the AI managed to circle around my scouts and destroy them.
The other interesting pillaging unit, the Privateer, was much useless. Even a lonely vet galley managed to sink one!

Agricultural and no rivers:
Dunno. I managed (as most of us) to build my second city on the hill by the lake, so I dragged the precious water all across the desert. As I decided to leave the capital at its initial place. The agricultural trait was not so useful in the ex Mongols lands, since even with my FP down there, most cities, even at size 12, produced just 1 shield pt. This is also the reason why I didn’t bother to research Sanitation and build hospitals. The worst ‘trait’ was in fact the jungle. It just kept all the cities south of the lake pretty useless for a long time, even with lots of captured workers.

KAI’s:
The only real opponent, well, from the early industrial ages, was China. However, I managed to keep the ottomans alive long enough for me to capture part of the northern continent. Finally, China helped me with the conquest of India. Its units would weak the Indian defences (and get slaughtered) and I could conquer their cities with few losses. Of course, in terms of techs, they were 5-6 techs a head. Again, AI stupidity: the started building the UN instead of the Apollo Programme.

Resources scarcity:
None, with a continent all by myself and half of the other one, I had more than enough. Most resources and luxuries were just idle for lack of buyers…


Governments:
I made the decision of going from Despotism directly to Feudalism and to stay there, this for two reasons: I thought that Feudalism would make it more ‘barbarian’. Could you imagine pillaging and going to war in a Democracy? From the news: ‘The Parliament has voted to build and arm 12 Privateers’.
The other reason was that I needed a government capable of supporting a huge standing army for my incessant wars. In this respect I had more than 270 units by the end of the game. I did not really want to be the tech leader, since I had planned to win by domination anyway.

Wonders:
I went only for the SoZ, Smith Trading Co. and of course ToE. I acquired the Pyramids, the Glighthouse and the Temple of Artemis (plus maybe a few other minor ones). The moral is that you can very well win with just a few selected Wonders.